2018: The Year in Reviews (The Wrap-Up)

We spent two weeks wrapping up the year to see what I thought of everything versus what I thought I’d think back in January. Now we get to my favorite part of the scientific method: analyzing the data.

What I do here is lay everything out and see just how well I did at guessing stuff, and what I thought of everything this year, by rating, by month, by just about any metric I can think of. I’d be lying if I didn’t say I greatly look forward to doing this every year.

Before we begin, here are all the articles for easy referencing, to show you it’s all legit:

Note: This article is never finished the moment it goes up. I will update it as I finish watching the last of the movies of the year. That tends to happen around mid-January. Could be later. I’m not looking to pad totals. So when I do watch the last of this year’s movies, I will go back and update, because I do love having my percentages correct.

Let’s start by saying — as of this moment, I’ve seen 483 movies this year. Somehow that percentage continues to climb. You can trace each year since I started this site: From 2011 through now, these are my annual totals: 178, 208, 237, 314, 345, 411, 442, and now 483.

The crazy thing about this year in particular is that I didn’t watch a single movie until the third week of February. I started 8 weeks late, and somehow for the majority of the year ended up about 8 weeks ahead of last year’s pace. Even by Thanksgiving, when things slow down, I was still a month ahead.

2018 Films I Skipped

Insidious: The Last Key

So yeah, almost a repeat of 2016. The only reason for the skip is because I don’t watch sequels when I haven’t seen the first one. Otherwise we’d have had 100% completion again.

The other thing I like to do is figure out my (relative) percentage of films I’ve watched. Of course, there are hundreds of movies that come out each year that no one sees, so it’s not a perfect total. But in terms of the wide releases, I do like to figure out how close I was to seeing “everything” as I like to tell people.

I managed the rare 100% completion milestone in 2016, and don’t expect to hit that again. But I clearly came close, having only missed the one. I generally end up around 96% or higher, especially these days. This year — 99.8%. So yeah. Almost unnecessary, but I do like to drill home just how much I do watch each year.

One of the things I never wanted to become was that person who has opinions on movies and only watches like 60 movies a year. Plus this gives me the ability to truly be able to recommend stuff, because, for better or worse, I’ve been through the wars. I’ve seen it all. I can say “don’t watch that” and know what I’m talking about. How many people can honestly say that?

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Now we’re gonna go over how I rated each of the films. You can see just how many films got which ratings. Gives you a general overview of how I thought of the year as a whole, and gives you an easy way to see where I rated particular films.

4 stars: Anna and the Apocalypse, At Eternity’s Gate, The Ballad of Buster Scruggs, BlacKkKlansman, Blindspotting, Bohemian Rhapsody, Creed II, The Death of Stalin, Eighth Grade, Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald, The Favourite, First Man, The Front Runner, The Hate U Give, I Kill Giants, If Beale Street Could Talk, Isle of Dogs, Jane Fonda in Five Acts, Latin History for Morons, Leave No Trace, Mandy, Mary Poppins Returns, Mission: Impossible – Fallout, Never Goin’ Back, The Night Is Short Walk On Girl, Ocean’s 8, The Old Man and the Gun, RBG, Ready Player One, Revenge, Robin Williams: Come Inside My Mind, Set It Up, Sicario: Day of the Soldado, The Sisters Brothers, Sorry to Bother You, Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, A Star Is Born, Tully, Unsane, White Boy Rick, You Were Never Really Here

I was gonna say this was the first year since 2014 there weren’t any 5-star films, but technically I didn’t have any 5-star films when I wrote this article up last year. Though a film I rated 4.5 stars has gone up to 5 stars since then, so I don’t necessarily count it. This one I think is gonna stick.

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Now we’re gonna go over, based on all the articles I’ve published over the past two weeks, just how well I did in my ratings guesses back in January versus what I actually thought of all the films.

I’m already thrilled. I always end up not having rated around 150 films, so that’s nothing new. But the fact that I only missed four total films by more than a half-star is just crazy to me.

Just to put this in perspective: every January, I rate as many films as I can get my hand. This year, 331 of them ended up coming out. It’s usually more. I have a large handful from previous years that carry over, and I go through a lot on my own. I go over all of them in about a three week span. I do the first six months in the first half of January, and I do the second half at the end of January, and then do three giant articles of films that are not dated but will be coming out likely over the course of the year, along with ones I’ve been tracking for multiple years. I pick a rating for each of them. I guess what I’m going to think about all of them. I do this generally very quickly. There’s no real thought that goes into it. It’s just a gut feeling. “That feels like a 3.” That’s it.

This past year, I wrote the majority of my ratings while very distracted and sitting in an ICU waiting area. So if I generally put next to no thought into the ratings most years, you can guess how much went into them this year. Obviously not everything I tracked came out this year. 331 of them did. Which means I rated much more than 331 movies. I wouldn’t be surprised if the number was closer to 500 in total. So I regurgitated ratings for close to 500 movies, and for the 331 that have come out, in only FOUR of them was my guess of what I would rate it more than a half star off from what I actually did rate it. And one of them could be argued that it was because I was given a very wrong synopsis that made the movie seem like it had a very different plot. But I’m not arguing that. I was wrong. Even so, 4/331 — that’s fucking In. Sane. Full. Stop.

To break it down into percentages, of the total number of films, I didn’t see/preview 150 of them. Which means our percentage is being based on 331 films. That’s where that number came from. Of the 331 films, I guessed my ratings for 219 of them exactly. Which is 66.1%. Last year I was at 51.7%, and in 2016 I was at 53.6%. We’re way above normal there.

I guessed 108 of them within a half-star of my eventual rating. So, of the 331 films, I guessed 327 either exactly or within a half-star. Which is 98.8%. 2016, I was at 93% and last year I raised it to 95.7%. So yeah, good year.

And then, four total movies I was a full star off on, and ZERO movies I was more than a full star off on. Last year, I had 12 films that I was a full star off on, and 1 more than a full star. So 13 in total full-star or more. 2016 I had 19 total. I try to keep it under 10 if I can, so the fact that I’m under 5 (!) is insane.

To put a finer point on it: this year I guessed how I’d rate 99% of movies within a half-star. That’s pretty fucking good.

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Average Ratings of all 2018 Films

This one’s self-explanatory. I told you how many films got which ratings. Based on that, I can figure out what the average rating of everything was. Which means, if I put any movie from this year on, this number would be the baseline for what rating it was gonna get.

This is normally the worst month of they year for me. It tends to have the least amount of VOD releases, and most of the big stuff tends to be stuff I do not like, around that Valentine’s Day week. Though we are hovering around 3 the past few years, so maybe February will end up overtaking January pretty soon.

That’s about in line for April. We’re usually in that 2.9-3 range. I feel like I’d skew it lower most of the time, but now that Marvel is taking that last week spot, it should push it slightly higher up.

Look how consistent September is. 2.95-3.05. That’s pretty much the range. Almost exclusively. It really depends on how bad the VOD releases are (because that Labor Day weekend is brutal) and if there’s a really strong Oscar contender (though rarely do they go over 4 stars here. October is when they get stronger).

This is where the ratings jump up exponentially, because this is when all the good films start coming out en masse. The shitty mainstream stuff and VOD releases keep it honest, as they do all months, but there’s an entire tenth of a point uptick (at minimum) between September and October.

November seems to be evening out to a 3.4 year. This is generally when a lot of great stuff comes out, but it’s also held somewhat down by the big Thanksgiving releases, some of which are generic blockbuster fare. But still, on average our second most solid month of the year, which should surprise no one.

"It was difficult for observers to tell whether ODB's wildly erratic behavior was the result of serious drug problems or genuine mental instability." -- My goal in life is to one day have this said about me.

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